In July 1859, directors of the Toronto Turf Club received word that Her Majesty Queen Victoria “had been graciously pleased” to grant a Plate of 50 Guineas “to be run for in Toronto or such other place as Her Majesty might appoint.” It was in answer to a petition they had made in April and it launched what is today the oldest consecutive thoroughbred horse race in North America, the Queen’s Plate.

The first winner the following June was not a three-year-old and had to win two out of three one-mile heats before the owners could claim the guineas. All three heats were required: the top four horses of the first race took part in the second and third contests after a 20-minute rest ordered by the Turf Club’s President, Casimir Gzowski. The horses had to have been bred in Upper Canada and not previously have won a race. This rule was criticized later.
 

The running of the Queen's Plate is North America's oldest, continuously run stakes race.  Known as one of the years premier thoroughbred horse racing events worldwide, when the first Plate was run at the New Woodbine racetrack, viewed here, near Malton, Ontario, In 1956, 20,000 race fans turned out to witness Canadian Champ stride to royal victory.  [Photo, courtesy The Toronto Star/Jeff Goode]

While the Carleton course located in what was then the city’s outskirts at Keele south of Dundas Street was suggested in the original petition, the royal proposal “or such other place as Her Majesty might appoint” came into being early. The 1864 running, for instance, was held at Guelph where for the first time a filly won over 11 other entries. Two years later the scene was Hamilton where some of the 5,000 spectators tried to enter the area reserved for the “well-to-do.” “Hamiltonians, it seems,” explained the reporter for the Spectator, “always observe Her Majesty’s birthday with unbridled enthusiasm,” adding, “liquor and beer on empty stomachs may have triggered the loutish behaviour.” A horse named Beacon won in two heats.

The tenth running took place at London and the favourite, Bay Jack, a four-year-old colt and half brother to Beacon won. Later the colt toured the continent and in 1872 made further headlines when he was given too much laudanum by a jockey at Strathroy and died of poisoning. A jockey went to jail but, to this day, historians are not sure if this was the jockey who had administered the drug.
 

Winning the Queen's Plate each year earns a royal gift of 50 guineas from the monarch. But the little purple bag of coins contains not guineas but sovereigns as minting guineas in England was discontinued by King George III. King George VI (with his queen consort Elizabeth) was the first monarch ever to attend a running of the Plate. In 1939, His Majesty presented the royal prize to George McCullagh, owner of Plate winner Archworth. [Photo, courtesy The Monarchist League of Canada]

Trouble of a different kind erupted at the 15th running in Hamilton when Charles Boyle, a well-known trainer, failed to let go of Emily, the horse he had trained and was holding, when the starter dropped the flag. She lost and her owner, Thomas Charles Patteson, complained about the defeat until his death in 1907.

Patteson was an Eaton and Oxford graduate who emigrated to Canada in 1858. He became a politician, manager, and editor of The Toronto Mail, establishing friendships with both the Governor General and the Prime Minister. He owned a stable and cattle farm and was critical not just of Boyle’s blunder but of horseracing activities generally. In 1881 he won the support of Toronto’s leading citizens as well as the local newspapers to create the Ontario Jockey Club with Gzowski as first president. That year the Queen’s Plate, after travelling to such cities as Prescott (1877) and Ottawa (1880), returned to the new Woodbine track in Toronto.

Still problems remained. Many of the horses and the jockeys were ill-trained. In 1885, for instance, the winning horse, Willie W., broke away two or three times and caused “tedious delay.” A jockey who broke a leg at the half-mile post in 1890 recalled that two steeplechase races were run before a carriage ambulance reached him.

In 1894 the battle for the 50 guineas was mild compared to the battle in the OJC boardroom when Patteson and two other directors tried to oust William Hendrie as president. They failed and were themselves removed from the board, but only after Patteson and Hendrie nearly came to blows. Among those stepping in to stop the fracas was Joseph Emm Seagram of Waterloo whose champion horses would dominate the Queen’s/King’s Plate for years and whose distilling would become world famous.

In 1902 the 50 guineas were awarded to the winner of the King’s Plate for the first time following the death of Queen Victoria. The race continued to be called the King’s Plate when George V became King in 1911. By 1915, anti-German feeling had caused the directors to ask one trainer of German background to withdraw from the race and to persuade another owner of German parentage to sell his best possible entry. Despite this, Charles Millar, a noted lawyer of German parentage, entered two horses that came in first and second. He got a law partner to pick up the guineas on his behalf. The Toronto World reported that “he was Canadian all over ... and has been so devoted to his old mother that he never married.”
 

The first running of the Queen's Plate in 1860 was celebrated at the Carleton Racecourse situated on a farm in an area later to be called West Toronto Junction. Between 1864 and 1880, the race for Queen Victoria's royal donation of 50 guineas was run on eleven different tracks outside Toronto including turfs at Kingston, Prescott, Ottawa, Picton, Whitby, Barrie, Guelph, St. Catharines, London, and Woodstock. During this time rural breeders dominated thoroughbred racing. When the neoteric racetrack at the New Woodbine, near Malton, opened in 1956, the annual running of the Queen's Plate in northwest Toronto now had a racetrack palace to showcase the oldest, North American continuous thoroughbred racing event. [Photo, courtesy Charles J. Humber]

According to Louis E. Cauz in his history entitled, The Plate — A Royal Tradition (1984), the war also prompted directors to allow horses to be trained outside the country and George Hendrie of Hamilton sent Springside to Kentucky before the colt returned to capture the guineas in 1918.

Crowds and excitement for the event continued through the 1920s. The biggest upset occurred in 1924 when Maternal Pride, with only one last-place finish as a two-year-old, won, and paid $193.35 on a $2 bet. The first radio broadcast of the event took place in 1925.

The Depression saw the demise of some stables, forced others to reduce their holdings, and caused the Jockey Club to see smaller crowds and offer smaller purses. Only 12,000 were on hand for the 1931 running; the purse of $7,850 plus the 50 guineas was $5,000 less than a year previous. R.S. McLaughlin’s Horometer was such a sure bet for the 75th running in 1934 that it paid only $2.10 on a $2 bet. Excitement ran high in 1939 as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth presented the guineas to George McCullagh, owner of Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

In 1944 the race was opened to any Canadian-bred horse and in 1948 the prize went to Jim Fair, a dirt farmer from the Brantford area, whose horse, Last Mark, was believed to be four rather than a three-year-old. Whatever the age, the colt swept to victory over Lord Fairmond ridden by one of the world’s most successful jockeys, Canada’s Johnny Longden, who would eventually win 6032 races including America’s Triple Crown (1943) but never, despite four attempts, the Plate.

The next year Edward Plunkett Taylor won the guineas for the first time. Horses from his stable, Windfields Farm, dominated the Plate over the next 15 years, his greatest victory occurring in 1964 when Northern Dancer, winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness earlier that year stood in the winner’s enclosure at Woodbine.The next year saw the first winner foaled from outside Ontario (Alberta). In 1968 Max Bell’s horse, Merger, became the second Alberta horse to win. A year later the popular Cuban-born jockey Alvelino Gomez had his fourth plate victory, a feat later accomplished by Canada’s Sandy Hawley who won his first and second Plate races in 1970 and ’71. The 1980 race, won by another Alberta horse, was dedicated to Gomez, who had been killed in a tragic accident at the Woodbine track a week earlier.

Mel James